Western Australian Plants

I find the plants in Australia very interesting.  I'm not a botanist but I do pay attention to the natural world and it's easy to see that plants down under are much different than the plants I'm used to seeing.  

I am a bit disappointed in these photos.  Most were taken in the harsh light of mid day so I knew the photo's weren't going to be great but I also used new lens with a focal length and f-stop that gave a much shallower depth of field than expected.  No excuses, just lessons learned.  

                                               

Indifference and the meaning of life

“The finest quality of this stone, these plants and animals, this desert landscape is the indifference manifest to our presence, our absence, our coming, our staying or our going.  Whether we live or die is a matter of absolutely no concern whatsoever to the desert.”  

Edward Abby - Desert Solitaire

Driving through the deserts of Western Australia I was listening to Desert Solitaire when I heard the passage above.  I thought of course the desert is indifferent to us.  The oceans, mountains, forests, winter, summer, rivers, tropics, weather, earth, sun, physics, chemistry are all indifferent to us.  The universe is indifferent to us.  

Then I thought “I feel like I matter.  I feel important.  Don’t we all feel like we are important?  Maybe this feeling that we matter is just an illusion.”  

I began to think about why I feel like I matter.  Look, there are road signs that help direct me to where I want to go.  Someone put them there for me.  Someone had a car waiting for me halfway around the world just so I could drive myself around in Australia.  Someone made all these cool gadgets for me.  Someone cooked me dinner last night and someone wished me “G’day” this morning.  All that makes me feel important.  But it was easy to see through all that.  It wasn’t that I really meant anything to these people.  It was money that really mattered to them.  I was just a means to get money.  It’s just an illusion.  Don’t get me wrong.  Most the people I meet are nice and genuinely friendly and certainly want me to have a good day and many help me without getting anything in return but a smile and a thank you.  But none of them are going to loose any sleep if I don’t have a good day unless I inconvenience them in someway while I’m having a bad day.  I move on, I’m forgotten, they’re indifferent.  

"Alone in the silence, I understand for a moment the dread which many feel in the presence of primeval desert, the unconscious fear which compels them to tame, alter or destroy what they cannot understand, to reduce the wild and prehuman to human dimensions. Anything rather than confront directly the ante-human, that other world which frightens not through danger or hostility but in something far worse - it's implacable indifference."  Edward Abby - Desert Solitaire

I feel like I’m important at work.  I get paid and benefits for starters.  Most of my coworkers are friendly and they help me get my projects done but that’s their job and they will need my help to get their stuff done too.  If I announced I got another job and was leaving they wouldn’t try to get me to stay.  I would not hear from very many after I left, mainly a few who would just contact me to see if I could help them get a job at my new company.  I’d move on, I’d be forgotten, my acquaintances are indifferent.  It’s an illusion. 

I thought about so many things that make me feel important and that I matter but in reality I don’t, not as an individual.  Maybe as a statistic or a dollar but not for who I am.  I won’t go into them all here, the list is too long.  

In among these thoughts I started thinking about how I care about the desert.  The deserts are important to me.  The mountains, oceans, animals, forests, earth are all important to me.  There are so many things I am not indifferent too.  I couldn’t even begin to list all of the things that matter to me, that make a difference to me.  Most of these things don’t care about me.  Most can’t care about anything at all, for example breakfast, my car, my camera, science, clean air, etc.  Some don’t really care about me as an individual, for example the Dallas Cowboys, Neil Young, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ami Vitale and even those I have helped through the charities I support.  None of them are going to call me to see how I am doing or send me a Christmas card (well, I have gotten Christmas cards from the Dallas Cowboys).  I know these are caring people and they are not indifferent to their fans and supporters.  But they care about their fans collectively not individually.  So even most people that I care about are indifferent to me.  

I saw this blue-tongue lizard in the road and stopped to move it away from traffic.  I do that for all reptiles I see on the road.  I care about them.  
I'm not indifferent to the desert.  

What about all the beings and things that matter to me but are indifferent to me?  They’re still matter to me.  They add enjoyment, adventure, knowledge, thrills, challenges and excitement to my life.  They’re part of me, maybe that’s why they’re important to me even though they don’t care about me. 

That brought me around to those that do care about me, that I do matter to, who are not indifferent to me.  My kids, my parents and the rest of my close family care about me and that’s not an illusion.  I love them and care about them too.  They matter to me.  My close friends care about me.  My cats and the dogs I’ve had aren’t indifferent to me and they treat me special.  

So in all the universe there are only a few beings that aren’t indifferent to me, everything else is.  Same is true for them, only a few beings in all the world aren’t indifferent to them.  Our solar system and the rest of the universe are indifferent to our small insignificant planet.  Things that are not indifferent to me are quite unique and rare in the universe.   

I don’t believe the universe has a meaning of life and it’s our job to find it.  Life just is, it’s part of the possibilities of this universe given the physics that operate here.  When conditions are right, life happens and evolves.  If we want a meaning to our lives each of us will have to figure it out for ourselves.  

Seeing through the illusion of being important humbled me a bit.  I’m not as important as I feel.  It also helped clarify the meaning of my life.  There are very few beings that I matter to and they are what matter most to me.  I better keep them close, take care of them, make sure they know I love them and make sure they know I’m not indifferent to them.  The desert and the universe are indifferent to them, they need to know they matter to me.  

In an indifferent universe maybe the greatest gift I can give anything is to show that I am not indifferent.  

There is much more I wanted to say in this post but truncated many of my thoughts to keep from wandering off on too many tangents.  So some of the ideas seem incomplete and a little cold to me.  I would liked to have gone on in more depth and to explore more thoughts but it would probably be of little interest to anyone but me.  For example, my mother used to tell me "Don't cry over things that can't cry over you." Another way to say don't care too much about things that can't care about you?  Maybe a good rule of thumb but are there exceptions?  

Shell Beach and Large Numbers

I am sometimes amused or at least entertained by large numbers.  This usually happens when I see a large number somewhere unexpectedly.  I recently saw a sign at Shell Beach that had a large number where I expected a larger number.  Shell Beach is part of Shark Bay in Western Australia.  I understand it is one of only two beaches in the world made entirely of shells.  I expected a lot of shells but I still thought there would be sand.  I was wrong.  Nothing but shells 5 meters deep (15 feet).  Shell Beach is a few hundred meters wide and many kilometers long.  An information sign on the beach said "Shells in their millions" make up the beach.  I felt that number was a bit small.  With the help of Google Maps and Wikipedia I estimated number of shells to be around a quadrillion.  That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000 (1E+15), a billion million.  

I know the sign was just trying to convey the idea that there are a lot of shells on the beach.  It’s not easy to get our heads around big numbers, so I guess millions is as good as any number for that purpose.  

I like to look at large numbers in different ways to help grasp just how unimaginably large they are.  For example a few years ago I bought a few Zimbabwe One Hundred Trillion Dollar bills on eBay and gave them away for Chinese New Years in red envelopes (紅包, hong bao).  (They are the largest note ever printed.  Hyper inflation in Zimbabwe is another story.)  My nephew was particularly impressed.  He told me that was the coolest thing ever.  I told him if he was given $1,000 every second starting when he was born, in 16 minutes and 40 seconds he would have a million dollars.  However, he would have to live 3,171 years to get one hundred trillion dollars.  

One of my favorite examples of a large number in an unexpected place is a 40 digit tracking number for delivery confirmation from the US Post office.  I had to enter all 40 digits to get the confirmation.  I thought the US Postal service was being pretty optimistic to have 40 digit tracking numbers.  Why do they need so many digits?  Were they thinking they could possible deliver 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 letters? If each letter was 1 millimeter thick, a stack of this many letters would be over 1E+21 lightyears high!  That’s beyond the edge of the observable universe.  If each of these letters weighed just 10 grams, the mass of this many letters would be 50 billion times the mass of the sun.  

The sign said shells have been piling up on this beach for about 4000 years.  If that is correct and my estimate is not high by a factor of 10 or more (I tried to keep it conservative), then on average 684,000,000 shells wash up everyday.  One way or the other that’s a lot of little critters living and dying out in Shark Bay.  

Got Bogged Again

Driving north on Indian Ocean Drive in Western Australia I kept looking to the west to see the Ocean.  There were numerous dirt tracks heading out to the beach so I decided to take a break and walk along the beach for a little while.  I turned down one little track and drove a few hundred meters.  I didn’t notice that the track wasn’t the red dirt of the surrounding land but it was white sand.  Well I didn’t notice until I was very near the beach and felt the wheels sinking into the sand.  I realized I had made a mistake and immediately made another mistake.  I tried to turn around by first backing up and trying to make a three point turn.   Well halfway through the turn my front wheels began to sink into the sand.  I tried to rock the car backwards then forward and was encourage because the car did move a little but all I was really doing was getting deeper into the sand.  I was bogged.  I got out and tried to stuff a few rocks and sticks under the front tires.  Just sunk deeper into the sand.  After trying this a few times the front wheels were so deep in the sand that the bottom of the car was resting on the sand.  I found a piece of concrete, a large brick and some old strips of carpet and an industrial type mat/rug that were no doubt left by others who had been bogged.  I also found a few flattened beer cans and started to dig.  

It was bad enough digging in the sand with beer cans under the hot sun but there were also Australian bush flies.  They look like ordinary flies but the are hellbent to suck the sweat off your skin or better yet crawl in your ears or fly up your nose (don’t want to think about why they wanted to do that).  I felt they must have sensed I was helpless and could not even attempt to shoo them away with a wave of my hand.  Digging in the sand with a beer can in each hand all I could do was curse them and occasionally shake my head like an annoyed cow.  When they flew up my nose (which was often) I blew them out with a snort.  

I tried digging out around the tires and stuffing the rocks, brick, carpet, mats and concrete under tires a few times but all I got was dirtier, hotter, more tired and madder at the flies.  No movement of the car.  I finally got out the jack and dug out under the car so I could put the brick under the car and the jack on top of it.  Then jacked the car up as high as it would go.  I dug out around the tires and under the car and tried to dig a path in the sand in front of the car.  I put the concrete and rocks under the tires and laid the carpet and mats out in front of the car.  Then removed the jack.  This time I was able to pull the car forward and out of the hole.  But, I was headed towards the beach and immediately got bogged again.  

About this time a lady walked down the road to watch her kids sail by in a few sail boats out on the Indian Ocean, looked like some kind of race or practice.  I asked her if she would drive while I pushed.  That just sunk the tires in deep again and she had to go to keep up with her kids and walked back to her car near the highway (note to self: locals don’t drive down these tracks).  

I wasn't planning to go on any 4X4 only roads this trip,  just well maintained dirt tracks like this one.
So I rented a small economy car.  

I was bogged a second time and to get out I had to drive through the sand pit that I had just dug myself out of.  It was hot, I was tired and covered with sand.  It was in my hair, in my ears, in my shoes, and stuck everywhere to my sweaty skin.  The bush flies were all over me like flies on... well, you know.  I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get out of this one but I wasn’t ready to go for help.  

I went straight to the jack method.  Digging, snorting, cussing, jacking the car up, moving rocks, carpet, mats and concrete.  And I got the car moving in reverse.  Instead of backing out down the road which didn’t seem to promising, I steered the car off the road and into the grass and small shrubs and drove around the big sand pit.  When it looked safe I backed on to the sandy track and turn around and drove back to the highway.  

I stopped at the highway to brush some of the sand off me and pour myself some water from my 10 liter jug.  It had taken me an hour and a half to dig myself out.  As usual a few bush flies followed me back into the car.  Outside they are obsessed with flying up my nose, crawling into my ears or tormenting me by walking around on the inside of my sunglass lenses.  But as soon as they are trapped in the car they panic and try to get out.  There was one buzzing around the driver’s side window.  I smacked it with the back of my hand and squished it dead then pulled back onto the highway.  

Didn't take any pictures of the beach at this place or of my bogged car. Didn't even walk along the beach there.
These beach photos were taken earlier that morning at a the beach in Cervantes.  

Get out the shovel and start diggin'

This post is about how my blog got it's name.  I know it's crazy to post a long story that has no photos.  It's crazy to post a long story.  I am sure few if any will actually read it but it is something I enjoy sharing and re-reading.  I originally wrote it in a notebook journal I kept on my first trip to Australia.  I later tried to put it into a more presentable story.  As I re-read it before posting I found more grammatical errors and I am sure I didn't find them all. I am sorry I couldn't capture the wonderful voices and accents of the travelers around the camp fire and share them with you.  

Get out the shovel and start diggin’

I wish I could re-live the night I spent at Palm Valley during my first trip to Australia.  Of all the places I visited, that is the place I think of most.  However Palm Valley is the one place I will likely never go again.  I have already returned to most of the places I went to on my first trip and plan to visit them all again - but not Palm Valley.  

I never planned to go to Palm Valley in the first place.  I planned to go to Boggy Hole.  Boggy Hole is a permanent billabong (water hole) on the Finke River.  The water attracts many animals that I wanted to see including dingos and reptiles.  I had read about the difficult “4x4 only” road to get to the remote billabong.  It sounded like the perfect outback experience.  

Both Boggy Hole and Palm Valley are campsites in Finke Gorge National Park in the Red Center of Australia.  I had arrived in Alice Springs that morning and rented a Toyota RAV4 to explore the outback.  After I loaded up with groceries I headed out to Tnorala (Gosse Bluff).  The pavement soon ended and I was on a dirt road in the outback.  The hills and mountains around were rather small with many flat areas in between.  The soil and rocks were all red.  It was similar to southern Utah without the spectacular mountains and rock formations but everything seemed new.  The dessert oaks, spinifex and other plants were so foreign they made the landscape very unfamiliar.  I didn’t have to get close up to tell they were different.  I could see it from the car.  The sky seemed new.  Even the horizon was new though I couldn’t quite figure out how. 

It took at least 3 to 4 hours to get to Tnorala.  I had passed a few vehicles along the way but once I took the turnoff to Tnorala I was the only one out there.  Tnorala is what is left of a crater where a comet impacted 142 million years ago.  It is a sacred site to the Aboriginal people who also believed it was formed by an extraterrestrial impact.  They believed a group of women were dancing across the Milky Way.  One of the women put her baby in a wooden carrier which later fell off the dancing area and crashed into earth then transformed into the circular rock formation.  Inside the crater there was only one short trail.  Being a sacred area, hiking off the trail was prohibited.  I didn’t stay there very long.  

I don’t know if it was the slower speeds traveling on the dirt roads or my poor judgment of distance on the map but it seemed to take a very long time to get to Hermannsburg.  Hermannsburg was just a dot on the map to help me get my bearings; a general store, a few trailers and most importantly a gas pump.   Just down the road from Hermannsburg was the turnoff to Boggy Hole where I planned to camp for the night.  I saw the sign identifying Ellery Creek.  I knew the road to Boggy Hole was near.  A mile or two past Ellery Creek I figured I had missed the track and turned back.  I pulled off the road at Ellery Creek and checked my guidebook and maps.  It turned out that the creek bed which is almost always dry, is the road.  I put the RAV4 into four-wheel drive and started down the creek bed. 

It was difficult to navigate the creek bed.  It was rocky with many shrubs and trees growing all over.  At first I could tell where other vehicles had traveled and I tried to follow the same route.  In other places I didn’t have a clue where to go.  I had to pick my own route.  A time or two I had to back up and try a different path.  In places the sand was very deep.  I could feel the tires sink deep into the sand and was lucky the SUV kept moving forward.  I knew if I came to a stop in the sand there would be no getting out.  The sun was just about down and I was making very slow progress.  I had traveled only a few km and it was still about 30 km to Boggy Hole.  I figured I would probably get stuck in the sand in the light of day.  At night I would have no chance of making it.  I knew of another campsite in Finke Gorge National Park, Palm Valley.  The guidebooks said the road to get there was much better.  I decided to play it safe.  I turned around and headed back to the main road.  I had to drive back towards Hermannsburg to the turnoff to Palm Valley.  At the beginning of the dirt road to Palm Valley a sign warned “Four-wheel drive only” but the road wasn’t bad.  It was just about dark when I arrived.  The campground was full of strange safari type vehicles and tents everywhere.  I felt out of place in the little RAV4.  The vehicles were like none I had ever seen.  They were big 4x4s customized for the outback.  Some even had large tents that popped up out of the roofs.  The beds were on the top of the vehicle.  They were all funky looking with supplies randomly attached all over.  Many had what seemed like whole dead trees strapped on top or on the back for firewood.  All were carrying large plastic containers for gas and water.  Many large tents were set up all over the campground.  I couldn’t find any level ground for my only camping gear, a sleeping bag and a short, thin Therm-a-Rest pad.  I could only find one spot to park the RAV4.  I decided I would sleep in the RAV4.  

It didn’t long to set up camp.  I just had to fill out the registration form and leave it along with a fee in the box by the entrance.  I then grabbed my jacket and flashlight and set out on one of the trails to find a quiet spot to watch the moon rise.  I knew the moon was a few days past full so it would not be too late rising.  I walked to up a small hill a few hundred meters away from the campground.  There I found a nice sitting rock so I sat down and looked up at the sky.  I was in awe looking at the sky.  Venous and Mars were out and the Southern Cross was very prominent but it was the stars that knocked me out.  More stars than I could imagine.  The Milky Way was so bright.  The sky was so clean and there was no light pollution around.  I later learned that the southern hemisphere looks into the center of our galaxy, while the northern hemisphere looks away from the center.  There are many more stars down under.  There were two bits of the Milky Way that were broken off from the rest and far removed from the main path.  I found out later these bits are not part of the Milky Way but our two nearest neighbor galaxies.  The Aborigines have a great emu in the sky that is formed from a dark spot (where there are no stars) in the Milky Way.  Unlike constellations that I know of the great emu looks exactly like an emu.  My neck hurt looking up for so long.  It was already sore from snorkeling and diving but I didn’t want to stop looking up.  I saw a few large slow moving meteorites cross the sky as I began to contemplate the universe.  

I always ask “Why?” when I look into a sky full of stars.  Why is there anything at all, matter, energy, space, time?  And if these things didn’t exist what would there be?  Would it be large or small?  What would be on the other side?  I have come to the conclusion that since my brain is finite it has limits and boundaries and since it does exist at least within some type of reality, I am not capable of imagining nothing at all nor can I picture infinite space and time.  I tried to imagine what some of the other worlds out there must be like.  What are their landscapes like?  What types of life make their homes there?  I realized I can’t even imagine all the life and landscapes that are on this planet let alone others.  These are things I have thought about for as long as I can remember when looking at the stars.  However this night a new question was on my mind.  

A few months earlier I was at work with a few friends talking about our approaching mid-life crises.  I mentioned the movie “City Slickers.”  There is a line in the movie that went something like “Have you ever looked in the mirror and said this is the best I’ll ever look, this is the best I’ll ever feel and it’s not very good?”  A few days later one of my friends brought the movie in for me to watch again.  As I watched it something about the movie connected with me.  Something made sense which hadn’t before.  It was what the characters were doing.  Going to a dude ranch to play “Cowboy” for a few weeks.  I didn’t want to go to a dude ranch but I felt I needed to do something like that.  I kept thinking about it until I realized what it was... Australia.  I’d always wanted to go to the Australian outback.  I needed an adventure and this was it.  The main character in “City Slickers” returns from the dude ranch having found his “One thing that matters.”  I wasn’t looking for what mattered.  I was trying to figure out where it was that I was trying so hard to get to.  

As I sat on my rock looking at the night sky I was trying to determine just where I was trying to get to in life.  When would I be there?  When could I quit trying?  When could I rest?  I felt there must be some point in life when I would have proved my worth.  I would have done all I needed to do and I could stop worrying.  I could stop struggling.  I would “Be there.”  I tried to define for myself what this point in life was.  I knew it wasn’t a physical place and death was not what I had in mind.  There must be a time and place where I won’t need to do anything else.  I felt I was struggling to get somewhere in life but didn’t know where.  Well, the stars were of no help with this question and the moon was late.  

I had been on the rock for at least an hour and there was still no sign of the moon.  Occasionally a dingo would howl. Then all of the children in the campground would howl in return much louder than the dingo.  I also heard outbursts of laughter coming from the campground.  It began to sound like a party.  I decided to walk back and get a bite to eat and see what was going on.  I didn’t make it back to the RAV4.  

At the edge of the campground many people had gathered around a large fire.  A ranger was giving a lecture about the area.  He was talking about the floods this area sees as well as the fish and parasites of the area.  He was just about finished when I got there.  I stood at the back of the crowd of people that had packed in tight around the fire.  After the ranger finished most of the crowd when back to their campsites.  A few dozen people stayed by the fire.  It was cold and like me, most of them did not have a campfire.  I made my way as close to the fire as I could to warm up.  The conversation soon turned to vehicles.  There was talk of Combies, Falcons and a lot about Land Cruisers.  The Land Cruisers they talked of didn’t look much like the Land Cruisers driven by my neighbors back home. One couple told of how they have been traveling for 6 years.  Two years earlier they were in England and somehow intercepted a special Toyota that was headed for Africa.  They drove it from England to India then shipped it to Southeast Asia.  After traveling around there they shipped it to Australia and were still traveling.  “Good on ya” repeated another lady who was delighted by their adventures.  

The conversation eventually turned more toward tracks (as the roads and trails in the outback are called).  They exchanged information and advice about tracks in the area.  One lady talked about how nice it was when they came to a stretch of bitumen track (bitumen is what they call a paved road).  For some reason out in middle of nowhere on the dirt tracks there would be short sections of bitumen usually less than 1 km long.  I couldn’t figure out why they were there and neither could the other travelers.  However this lady quite liked the smooth riding on the bitumen sections “It’s quiet enough to actually have a short conversation. Then before you know it you’re back on the dirt and you can’t even hear yourself think.”  

Eventually someone asked the ranger about the track to Boggy Hole.  “Is it really that bad?”  The ranger explained that he didn’t think it was that bad but he does spend most of his time pulling out vehicles that have gotten bogged along this track.  They all began exchanging stories about getting bogged or helping some other bloke that got bogged.  The ranger was asked if he had ever been bogged.  “No, never ‘round here mate.”  He said he had been bogged in Queensland in that “Terrible black soil.  Just 3 drops of rain is enough to get you bogged up there.”  They all agreed that everyone gets bogged in Queensland.  The ranger was standing with his arm around his son who must have been about 10 years old.  One man kidded with the boy and asked him “Are you a ranger in training?  Have you ever been bogged?”  The ranger encouraged his son to tell us if he had been bogged or not.  The boy seemed too shy to speak so his father helped him out.  “He was once drivin’ with me dad when me dad got bogged.  Me son told him to ‘Get out the shovel and start diggin’.’ So he must a’ bēēn bogged before.”  

I had many questions I wanted to ask these travelers.  How do they get time to travel like this?  Do they have homes and jobs?  Where are they going?  I didn’t dare speak though.  I didn’t want to change the conversations at all.  I knew if I opened my mouth there would be questions about me.  What d’ya think your doin’ out here with that tiny Toyota?  What brings you half way around the world and back o’ beyond all alone mate?  I just wanted to listen and hoped no one would notice me.  

Eventually I noticed the eastern horizon beginning to light up.  I stepped away from the fire, turned my flashlight on and headed back to my rock on the hill.  As the moon crept closer to the horizon the trees silhouetted on the mountains began to glow.  They looked like trees in the morning after a light snow.  I watched as the moonlight lit up the surrounding mountains.  The edge of the mountain’s shadow finally reached my sitting rock and the moon was up.  The moon changed everything.  It’s light spread across the sky washing out all but the brightest stars.  It was now so light it seemed like day compared to the complete darkness that had covered Finke Gorge just minutes before.  I could see details of trees and rocks on the mountains across the valley.  It was late and cold when I walked back to camp.  

Most of the campers had gone to sleep by then.  I laid the back seat down in the RAV4, rolled out the pad and sleeping bag and went to sleep.  I never warmed up and woke up often but I had no complaints.  It was a great night.  As the sun began to lighten the sky I could no longer sleep.  I decided to get an early start to my next destination, Kings Canyon.  I took a quick and very cold shower at the campground (there was no hot water).  Then packed the car up and backed out of my campsite.  As I passed the other vehicles I thought I should take some pictures of them.  I didn’t.  I figured I would take pictures of them at the other places I was going to visit.  

As I drove to Kings Canyon I kept thinking about my question “Where is it that I am trying to get to?”  I also thought about the conversations around the campfire.  There was something very strange about the conversations.  Here were all these travelers who had been on the road a long time.  They just gathered together for a short time around a fire to stay warm.  They talked about their vehicles.  They talked about various tracks, smooth tracks, dirty rough tracks and down right difficult muddy tracks.  They talked about getting bogged, others getting bogged, helping others who were bogged and sometimes digging themselves out.  But none of them mentioned where they were going.  No one asked anyone else where they were going.  It was as if none of them had any destination at all.  They were just traveling for the joy of traveling.  I realized my good mates around the campfire had provided me with the answer to my question.  There are no destinations in life only tracks with campsites along the way.  The tracks are sometimes paved with bitumen, smooth easygoing.  Most of the time the tracks are dusty, bumpy, dirt tracks that rattle your brains.  Sometimes the tracks get too sandy or rocky, maybe the weather changes on you, or maybe the water crossing is too deep and you find yourself bogged.  Many times a good mate will show up to pull you out.  Other times you just have to “Get out the shovel and start diggin’.”

At Kings Canyon the track turned into a bitumen highway for the rest of my trip.  Once I hit the bitumen the crazy outback vehicles disappeared.  I didn’t see anything like them again.  I had missed my chance to take pictures of them.  I later realized that I hadn’t taken any pictures at Palm Valley at all.  I am glad I didn’t.  Photographs often become our memories of places we’ve been.  Although I love photos, two dimensional, carefully cropped images never truly capture an experience.  I have notes of my trip in a spiral notebook and I have what I can remember of Palm Valley in my head.  That’s perfect.  I would love to re-live that night at Palm Valley but I can’t.  I can’t even go back there.  I would be too disappointed.  It could never again be as good as I remember it.  I’m sure there would not be as many stars as I remember.  The moon would not be as bright, the fire would not be as warm and the vehicles not as strange.  The dingos may not even howl.  I could not be treated to fireside stories as wonderful as those I remember.  No, I will never go to Palm Valley again.  Next time I’m takin’ the track to Boggy Hole…and I’ll pack a shovel.

Back of Beyond

After two long posts about Heron Island with no pictures I figured I better post some kind of photo.  I didn't have a digital camera when I was on Heron Island.  I did take photos there but none were anything special.  This is a photo from a more recent trip down under.  A boab tree somewhere in the Western Australia.  It has obviously been Photoshopped.  I like the effect.  It looks like something from another planet which is how I feel in the outback.  There are trees, bushes, grasses, insects and animals but there is something different about them, something unfamiliar.  

Heron Island - Singles Table

A hostess greeted me at the entrance of the Heron Island restaurant.  She explained that they had assigned seating for the guests.  Since I was there by myself, I was assigned to the singles table.  I did not like this news, I’m kinda shy and like to just sit by myself.  I didn’t protest but I wasn’t comfortable.  She showed me to my table.  I don’t remember if I was the first there or not but soon there were four of us at the table.  A shy young Australian kid.  Lori, a girl from the US who had been on a semester abroad and was doing a little traveling before returning home, and Matt Zarb, a bald Australian man with big loop earrings that looked like Mr. Clean.  The shy kid didn't say much during the meal and neither did I.  We just listened to the conversation between the other two.  


Eventually the topic of guitars somehow came up.  That not only got my attention, it also got me talking.  Matt obviously played guitars.  The two of us were soon talking about guitars and our favorite music.  He told me about Paul Kelly and other Australian singer song writers.  I told him about Greg Brown, Lucy Kaplansky, Leo Kottke and others.  He was very interested in the music I was telling him about and wanted to know how I had heard of these artists.  He asked me if I had heard of Dakoda Blonde.  I had not.  He said a friend of his had sent him their CD.  They were from the US and did a great version of “Down Under” but they got some of the lyrics wrong.  We ended up staying there long after dinner talking about music.  Lori stayed too occasionally joining the conversation when she could get a word or two in.  Eventually, Lori asked Matt something about performing that night.  Matt was the entertainment for the resort and was going to be performing soon.  I didn’t realize I was talking to an artist of that level.  I thought he just loved music like I did.  


I went to the lounge for Matt’s performance that night.  There were only a few of us there but Matt played as if playing for a packed house.  He played a mix of his own songs and covers.  Between each song he took “A sip o’ me beer.”  He took request and seemed to know just about everything.  He played a fantastic version of “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”  He played most of that song scratching the strings with his pick and creating a fantastic rhythm.  He played “Down Under” to the delight of us foreigners.  

I looked forward to the singles table after that.  Matt was so much fun to be around.  He never acted like he was special because he was a talented performer.  He enjoyed hanging out with us as much as we enjoyed having him at the table.  He told us what it’s like trying to make a living as a musician.  Explained some Aussie slang.  I remember he swam around the island every morning to stay in shape.  He told me there were a bunch of sting rays and shovel rays that gathered just off the west side of the island in the late afternoon (this made for some nice snorkeling).  He told the funniest jokes I have ever heard.  Although it was his delivery with a jolly Australian accent that I enjoyed the most.  I hung out at the lounge each evening to listen to Matt play.  He’s seemed to always be having so much fun it was impossible not to enjoy his show.  

I got Matt’s address and later sent him a CD with my favorite songs from the artists I told him about.  I don’t know if he received it or not.  I searched for him on the internet but couldn’t find him.  A few years later I did find him on the internet.  He had recorded a few CD’s with his brother.  I was able to get them at CDBaby.  His song “Vincent Road” has become one of my favorites.  It’s about the home he grew up in and how he sometimes wishes he could go back there.  On his web site he once wrote that he did go back there and was disappointed.  It wasn’t the way he remembered and he said he doesn’t want to go back no more.  It is still a fantastic song.  I think we all have a “Vincent Road” somewhere.  

Matt spent some time in the US but he is back in Australia and performs often.  I hope I can catch one of his shows next time I am in Australia.  I really shouldn't be so shy about talking to people I don't know.  Especially when traveling.  

Heron Island - "No Worries, Love"

It took a bit of travel to get to Heron Island.  I flew to LA.  Then to Sydney.  I had a 5 or 6 hour layover in Sydney so I checked my bags in and took a taxi to Circular Quay to see the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and to get some breakfast.  My next flight was to Brisbane.  After a short layover I flew to a small airport in Gladstone where I ran from the plane to a helicopter which took me to Heron Island as the sun was setting.  I was spending my first night Down Under on Heron Island and the next morning I would be scuba diving in the ocean for the first time.  

It was a short ride in small boat to our first dive site.  As soon as the boat stopped it was like a race to get our gear on and get in the water.  Except for me.  I got my open water certification a year an half earlier.  A mountain bike crash ruined plans for my first dive trip.  So it had been awhile since I put the regulator, BC, tanks and the rest of the gear on.  I wasn’t sure I was doing it right and was pretty slow.  There were only about a dozen divers on the boat and dive master soon spotted my troubles and came over to help me get ready.  Once in the water everything was great.  There was a large nurse shark right where we descended.  The fish and corals of the Great Barrier Reef were amazing.  When I was pulling myself back  into the boat after the dive my weight belt fell off and sank back into the ocean.  

“No worries” the dive master said “someone will find it down there.”  

I didn’t worry.  I had a great second dive and wonderful evening.  

The next morning I got up early to dive again.  Feeling a bit more confident I was able to keep up with the other divers as we got ready.  We descended about 10 to 12 meters for the first part of the dive.  About five minutes into the dive I notice a weight belt on the ocean floor right below me.  We were at a different dive site.  It couldn’t be my weight belt from the day before.  Oh Shit!  It was my weight belt from this morning.  My belt had come off again.  I immediately remembered the instructions from the dive master when I was certifying.  “If you accidentally drop your weight belt, wave bye bye to the other divers cause your going to the surface.  Just spread eagle and try to ascend as slowly as possible.”  I didn’t wave to the other divers but I rise to the surface spread eagle.  

At the surface I saw the boat about 50 meters away and gave the diver’s okay signal and call out “Hello” until I got the attention of the captain.  I wasn’t happy my first dive was cut short but we were schedule to do two dives so I still had one to go.  He brought the boat over to me and as I climbed into the boat he asked what happened.  I told him my weight belt fell off and I surfaced. 

“How deep were you? How long were you down?  How fast did you come to the surface?”  

I could tell he was concerned.  I tried to assure him everything was alright.  I wasn’t down very deep and was only down for a few minutes.  Technically I didn’t even need to do a safety stop before surfacing.  He asked if I felt any tingling or had any muscle or joint stiffness.  

I said “No worries. I’m fine.”  

"Just to be safe I'm going to have you lay down and give you some oxygen."  

“Well, okay.  I’ll do that.”  

After he got the oxygen mask on me and covered me with a blanket he got on the radio and was asking someone for advice as to what to do next.  

I pulled the mask of my face to reassure him “I feel fine.  I wasn’t down very deep or very long.”  

He set the radio down and said we have to take you in.  He leaned over the side of the boat and started banging on the hull giving the emergency signal to the other divers.  

“No!  Really, I’am okay.”  

“Lay down and keep the mask on.”

It was too late the other divers would be surfacing soon.  I felt terrible.  I had ruined their dive too.  As the divers climbed into the boat each one quickly dropped their gear and rushed over to my side.  

“Are you okay?”

“What happened?”

“Are you warm?  Do you need another blanket?”

I lifted my mask a little.  “I feel fine.  Really.  It’s no big deal.  I was only...”

A hand pressed the mask back over my nose and mouth.  

“You’re going to be alright.”

“We’re going to take care of you.”

“Don’t worry.”  

All the divers were back on the boat and huddled around me.

“I’m not worried, I...”

Another hand pressed the mask back over my face.  There was nothing I could do.  They were taking me back to the island.  About then I accepted the fact that my diving was over for the day.  

As we neared the jetty I spotted a red helicopter flying towards the island.  It took me a minute to realize it wasn’t the helicopter that brings guests to the island.  I thought to myself “Oh hell, they better not life flight me off the island to a decompression chamber.”  I tried to protest again but one of the divers held the mask to my face.  I gave up my resistance at that point.  

They struggled a bit lifting me from the bench onto a stretcher.  I tried to suggest that I just walk or at least get myself on the stretcher but they would not let me get up or even sit up.  The divers helped the medical team from the island get me onto the stretcher, cover me with blankets, set the oxygen tank on top and carry me off the boat. 

Heron Island is small, just one resort but nearly everyone on the island was waiting at the jetty to see what had happened.  I was carried right through the crowd which pressed as close as possible to get a good look at who was injured.  

I could hear people ask “What happened?” 

“Was it a shark?” 

“Is he going to be alright?”  

They carried me off the jetty to a cart waiting on the sand.  I could see the red helicopter on the pad with the blades still spinning.  Thankfully, they drove me straight to the small medical clinic a short distance away instead.  They carried me into the clinic and lifted me onto a bed.  The dive master reported the details to the young lady at the clinic and left.  I was relieved to get away from the divers and the crowd on the beach.  

I am not sure if the lady was a doctor, nurse, EMT, paramedic or what.  I can no longer remember her name.  She replaced the large oxygen mask with the kind that has two little tubes that went in my nose and she let me sit up a bit.  She checked my vitals signs and kept calling me “Love.”  I know she called everyone “Love” like many Australian women do but it was new for me and I liked it.  She left a sensor clipped to one of my fingers and said I had to stay there to be watched for an hour.  

By then I had to pee very bad so I asked if I could get up and go to the restroom.   

“No love, you can’t get up for an hour.”

“Is this my punishment for dropping two weight belts?”

She didn’t seem to catch my attempt at humor and went into the next room.  Soon she came back in and held out a glass bottle.  

“Here’s a bottle you can use if you like.”  

It took me a moment to realize what she was suggesting I could use the bottle for.  “No thanks.  Not right now.  I’ll try to hold it.”  

For the next hour I sat up in the damp bed and watched the clock with my wetsuit pulled down to my waist, oxygen in my nose and a little monitor clipped to me finger.  I chatted with the lady as she walked in and out of the room.  As soon as an hour was up and she gave me the okay, I jumped off the bed and raced to the rest room.  

Leaving the clinic a few minutes later I thanked her for taking good care of me.

“No worries, love.”